The present invention relates to the field of mail facilities, particularly to a mailbox apparatus.
Mailboxes for apartment buildings are configured in the form of a box in which the door thereof is pivotally attached to a horizontal hinge disposed at the upper facet of the box. The purpose of such a structure is to keep the mailbox door closed when no force is applied on the door, preventing exposure of the mail to a stranger and/or the elements.
Such a structure has a distinct ergonomic disadvantage. In order to retrieve mail from such a box, a user must hold the door with one hand, while extracting the mail with the other hand. However, when a user has only one hand free (e.g., due to carrying items or an injury), it is preferable be able to access the mailbox door simply with one hand.
A door pivotally connected to a mailbox by a vertical hinge may solve the problem; however, such doors won't close by themselves. Prior-art methods have not provided satisfactory solutions to the problem of single-handedly retrieving mail from a mailbox.
It would be desirable to have a mailbox apparatus that would, inter alia, overcome the various limitations mentioned above.